[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3150-3151]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        A NEW GOVERNMENT IN IRAQ

  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, on the heels of passing a much-needed pay 
and benefits increase for the men and women who give up their freedom 
to serve us in our armed services, I want to direct my colleagues' 
attention to one longstanding military mission these men and women have 
been assigned. That is the mission of containing the threat of Saddam 
Hussein in Iraq.
  Mr. President, I do this for a couple of reasons. First is that I 
have argued for a stronger military operation in Iraq. Indeed, I have 
argued to change the objective from containment to replacement. And 
oftentimes people come back and say, well, if we do that, we will risk 
lives.
  I would like to describe to my colleagues--in fact, we have a 
military operation going on today, have had since 1991; and this 
military operation is costing us dearly both in lives and in money.
  Mr. President, last Tuesday I had the opportunity to give a speech to 
the cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and they asked 
me to speak on patriotism, for which I was only too anxious to oblige.
  I talked to them about something that I think is causing the decline 
in enrollment--in addition to the inadequate pay and retirement 
benefits--and that is that Americans are less willing to volunteer for 
service in our Armed Forces as a consequence, in my judgment, of our 
not doing enough to tell them --especially our younger citizens--the 
stories of heroism which are being written every single day by the 
brave men and women who wear the uniform of one of our services. 
Instead of role models of people who have given themselves to a higher 
cause, Mr. President, unfortunately our young people are being told an 
increasing number of stories, especially on television, of self-
gratification and indulgency. It is no wonder as a consequence that a 
patriotic decision to serve seems like a nonmainstream choice.
  Before I gave my speech at the Academy, the superintendent warned me 
I needed to remember how young my audience was. ``Half your audience,'' 
he said, ``wasn't even 10 years of age when Saddam Hussein invaded 
Kuwait in 1990.'' Mr. President, I must tell you that gave me some 
pause because that seemed like yesterday that happened, but, in fact, a 
great deal of time has expired since then.
  For me, the statement was more than just a reminder to be careful 
what language I used when talking to these young people, but also a 
wakeup call not to take for granted the military mission that we have 
in place in Iraq today. It is a dangerous military operation. It is a 
military operation that costs us a great deal of money, and I hazard a 
guess that most of us who have looked at the objective of containing 
Saddam Hussein would say that the mission is dangerously close to 
unraveling.
  This military strategy began in August 1990 when Saddam Hussein 
invaded Kuwait. In response to this active aggression, the United 
States, under President Bush's leadership, assembled and led an 
international coalition of forces against Iraq. It was a costly war, 
both in terms of our financial commitment but also in terms of the 
human cost to the more than 540,000 men and women in our military 
forces deployed to the Persian Gulf. Sixty billion dollars was spent 
prosecuting the war, but this does not compare to the price paid by 389 
American families who lost loved ones in Operation Desert Storm.
  At the end of the war, most Americans assumed our military commitment 
to Iraq would come to an end. After all, the war had been fought. We 
had been victorious. Saddam Hussein had sued for peace. It was time to 
bring home the troops. But almost from the beginning, Saddam Hussein 
refused to abide by the terms of the cease-fire agreements his 
government had signed. From violating the no-fly zones to obstructing 
the work of weapons inspectors to provoking troop deployments, Iraq's 
continual challenges and our policy of containment forced us to 
maintain a very strong military presence in the region. With each 
crisis generated by the Iraqi regime, the United States and our allies 
responded to the deployment of more troops and at times with the use of 
military force. While it is difficult to quantify the monetary cost of 
the numerous redeployments and military confrontations that have taken 
place with Iraq over the last 8 years, it is even more difficult to 
quantify the effect these deployments have had on our troops. How many 
families have had to be separated for months at a time? What has been 
the cost in morale for troops deployed to the Desert?
  We must also examine the broader costs of our military strategy in 
Iraq. The continual need for large numbers of American troops in Saudi 
Arabia has created a strong sense of resentment throughout the Arab 
world, and it has also increased the danger of terrorist acts against 
Americans.
  Again, I have urged a different military strategy with a different 
objective in the past. The reason I bring this story to the floor, Mr. 
President, is oftentimes people will say, ``Americans don't want to 
risk the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines in a 
military operation.'' In 1996, 19 Americans were killed in the Khobar 
Towers bombing and they died as a result of the anger directed at the 
American military presence in the gulf. Indeed, the terrorist bombings 
of U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, in which 12 
Americans were killed, were directed by Osama bin Laden, a man who had 
been stripped of his Saudi citizenship for financing Islamic militants 
in Algeria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Today, bin Laden remains at large 
and remains a significant threat not just to people of the world but 
especially to American citizens around the world. The reason he is a 
threat and the reason he has killed not just Americans but Kenyans is 
we are deploying a military operation in Saudi Arabia. It is our 
presence that he objects to. It is our presence and our military 
strategy that is being met with his terrorist activities.
  Again, I raise these points because I think we have a tendency to 
forget the price that we paid for our policy in Iraq. We forget the 
price that we are paying today for our policy in Iraq. This policy has 
been described as containment. It has been expensive and, in my 
judgment, it has failed. Recent events may indicate that there is a 
light at the end of the tunnel. The Iraqi people may be closer to their 
freedom than at any time in years. America must be prepared for sudden 
change in that country.
  The Iraqi people are suffering. The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein is 
among the most brutal and repressive in the world. Americans can be 
proud of the leading role we are playing in confronting this 
dictatorship. Last fall President Clinton and Congress took a big step 
towards delegitimizing Saddam by passing and signing the Iraqi 
Liberation Act. The world was placed on notice that America wanted to 
see

[[Page 3151]]

Saddam's dictatorship gone and would work with democratic opposition 
groups to attain that goal.
  The administration and our British allies took another big step in 
December with the Desert Fox airstrikes. By attacking the underpinnings 
of Saddam's power, the Special Republican Guards and the intelligence 
services, Operation Desert Fox reduced Saddam's ability to terrorize 
his people and showed Iraqis we and our allies were truly opposed to 
Saddam in a way previous air campaigns had not done.
  Saddam responded to Desert Fox by undertaking regular violations of 
the northern and southern no-fly zones, trying to entice allied 
aircraft into air defense missile ambushes. The allied counter has been 
highly effective. Rather than simply chasing retreating Iraqi aircraft, 
United States and allied warplanes have been attacking the Iraqi air 
defense missile and radar and communication sites, which would support 
such ambushes. Almost every day so far in 1999 we have attacked some 
Iraqi air defense installation in response to a no-fly zone violation. 
The effectiveness and readiness of Saddam's air defense forces decline 
daily. Equally important, the complete impotence of Saddam's military 
relative to the allies is made plain to all Iraqis. In military terms, 
the Iraqi regime has never looked weaker.
  Last weekend, the world saw signs of a political rally to match the 
decline of Iraq's military. The Grand Ayatollah of the Shiites, the 
spiritual leader of 65 percent of Iraqis who are Shiite Muslims, was 
murdered Thursday night with two of his sons. According to press 
reports, the Grand Ayatollah had reportedly opposed the regime's 
directive to all Muslims that they pray at home rather than at Friday 
services in mosques. Opposition sources said the Grand Ayatollah had 
preached against the regime and had blamed it for the misery of Iraqis. 
Perhaps for these reasons, Shiite Muslim Iraqis suspected the 
government of the crime and took to the streets in Baghdad and in 
several southern cities.
  The Iraqi opposition groups claim scores, perhaps hundreds, of Iraqis 
were killed in the government's harsh response. Two other Shiite 
leaders of international reputation have also been mysteriously 
murdered in southern Iraq within the last year. The murder of the Grand 
Ayatollah, coming on these earlier murders and in the background of 
longstanding Shiite resistance to Saddam's regime, sparked 
demonstrations and violent government responses in Baghdad and several 
other cities, according to opposition reports. By Sunday night, the 
regime had apparently quelled the demonstrations. The human cost and 
the extent of continuing Shiite hostility to Saddam's regime are simply 
not known to us, but the episode demonstrates the Iraqi government's 
lack of legitimacy in the eyes of its people, as well as the extent to 
which Saddam would go to suppress any opposition. The episode reveals a 
weakening Iraqi regime lashing out in an increasingly desperate effort 
to maintain power. When dictatorships act this way, it may signal that 
their end is near.
  But when the end comes, it may come quickly. The question will be, Is 
America prepared for the end? If we have done our homework on the 
various Iraqi opposition groups and actively supported the groups which 
qualify under the criteria set forth in the Iraq Liberation Act, we 
will be well positioned to help Iraq make the transition to democracy. 
However, if we delay full implementation of the act and take a wait-
and-see posture toward the opposition, we should not be surprised if 
our influence on events in post-Saddam Iraq is slight. Similarly, if we 
do not have humanitarian supplies ready to be forwarded to Iraq as soon 
as Saddam falls, and if we do not have international consensus for 
forgiving the debts of a post-Saddam Iraq, we should not be surprised 
to see him replaced by another hostile dictator.
  Mr. President, we have a vital national interest in Iraq's future. 
The lives of young Americans are invested there--our honored dead from 
the gulf war, as well as from the terrorist attack on Khobar Towers. 
The valor of our young warriors--now being demonstrated daily in the 
skies over Iraq--is invested there.
  Tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have spent 
months of their lives on deployments to the Persian Gulf and to Turkey 
in support of the U.S. policy to contain Iraq. We have invested 
billions of dollars supporting this policy: $1.36 billion on 
deployments in fiscal year 1998 alone, and $800 million so far in 
fiscal year 1999.
  The American people have made this heavy investment and they have the 
right to a good return--a democratic Iraq at peace with its neighbors 
and with its people, so we can bring our troops, ships, and planes home 
for good. To attain this return, we must be ready for an internal 
crisis in Iraq, which could occur sooner than we expect.
  Mr. President, on later occasions, I intend to come to the floor to 
describe why I believe a policy other than containment is necessary. I 
understand there are people who are very suspicious and very guarded in 
their assessments of our success. But I ask them merely to look at 
previous examples of where the United States of America has been 
successful in the face of considerable skepticism about our ability to 
get that done.
  In addition, Mr. President, we have, as I have tried to outline here, 
a considerable military investment and a risky operation going on today 
that puts every single one of these men and women, their health, 
safety, and well-being at risk, and we should not and dare not take 
that for granted.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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